Lest It Be Forgotten After I Am Gone: Comparisons - 2
...And what about the daily milk deliveries in glass bottles that sported two or three inches of real cream at the top, all covered by an easily removable cardboard disc, as well as the daily bread and cake deliveries all arriving in horse-drawn carts....
Raymon Benedyk recalls the days of seventy, and more, years ago.
A lot of very poor houses had no refrigerator in their kitchen, with perishable food usually being purchased daily and kept in 'the pantry' in storage tins to prevent the mice that swarmed everywhere getting at it. Where it was possible, perishable food was kept overnight in a food-storage 'safe' hung outside a convenient window on the north wall of your abode. And when you did buy a fridge, it could well be of the type in which food was kept cold by the delivery two or three times a week of a large block of ice which was held in a special container in the base of your 'ice-box'.
And what about the daily milk deliveries in glass bottles that sported two or three inches of real cream at the top, all covered by an easily removable cardboard disc, as well as the daily bread and cake deliveries all arriving in horse-drawn carts. And of course the coal man with his cart horse sending his delivery into the cellar of your home through a small round iron trap in the pavement outside your house, and the rubbish collections made each week by the council dust cart pulled by an enormous horse who trudged on at a whistle given by the driver, or a "chick- chick' clicking noise he made, who would shout "Whoah" when he wanted the horse to stop; and the postal collections and deliveries several times a day, all services which over the years have disappeared from our scenes.
I first went to school in September 1931. Teachers were god to the children in those days, and when you were told to do something - or to stop doing something - you obeyed without hesitation. And if teacher thought it necessary to punish or smack a very naughty pupil, the punishment was meted out without any consideration that the teacher might hurt a child or cause it psychological damage. An older child would receive a few cane strokes across the palm of the hand or (boys anyway) on the seat of their trousers. Of course some teachers may well have been paedophiles, but it was all part of the child's growing up experience from which it was meant to learn how to avoid the need to be punished in the first place in future.
In those days too, most 'poor' homes had no electricity with cooking and lighting by gas being financed by 'a shilling in the gas meter' system. This was fine since it did not allow gas company customers to get into debt. However, there was a serious downside too, in that when the gas supply ran out and the appliance was no longer working because the shillings worth had expired, in many cases the appliance was unknowingly left on by the user and, when the next shilling was inserted in the meter, and gas was again being delivered to the user, the open gas supply often gassed those in the vicinity.
